Tuesday, January 1, 2013

2013
was celebrated with lots and lots of pyrotechnics rocking the city at exactly
midnight on Tuesday. Millions of people thronged the city squares for the New
Year parties; excited to enter 2013 with new resolutions they set in mind.

For
those who were hoping to experience Armageddon, sorry to disappoint you but
Aerosmith won’t be performing any “Farewell, World” songs. Haven’t anybody told you to not trust any random dead guy? Yeah,
you still need to serve those loans and you still need to send your kids to
school and not try drugs just yet. Life continues. The fact of the matter is life
IS monotonous and plain for the most of us unless your name is Felix
Baumgartner. And that Mayan guy’s prediction added a dash of excitement and
‘hope’ in our routine life. We need hope to look forward to the future. Without
it, everyday is the end of the world for us, so to speak, isn’t it?

12
years of hope had brought FingerTec to where it is now, one of the renowned global
brands of biometrics. With our humble beginnings and hearts full of hope, we
have successfully stamped the FingerTec brand across the world (in style, I might add). At this moment,
we have made our presence felt in the USA, Middle East, Africa and Asia. We
have secured reliable partners from all across the globe who were with us
through thick and thin, striving to present the FingerTec name to the best of
their abilities. My sincerest gratitude
to all of you.

And in
conjunction with New Year’s celebration, we are proud to launch our magazine,
Beyond Biometrics yet again. This annual magazine is filled with information
about what we have done in the past year, and what we are looking forward to in
2013. Our milestones have taught us about our strengths and they have also
reminded us of our weaknesses. It is our hope to build on our strengths further
and work on our weaknesses for the good of the brand. We urge our partners and
our customers to continuously provide us with feedbacks so we know where we
stand.

With
this opportunity, I welcome you to 2013, and I insist that you get your copies
of Beyond Biometrics from us. If you want to be featured in Beyond Biometrics
2014, please do submit your stories for our monthly newsletter.

It’s
our pleasure to serve you in this new year and if you have anything you want to
share with me, kindly drop an email to ana@fingertec.com

Thursday, November 29, 2012

When all else failed, employees would always resort to fake MC. Word of advice to employer: Let the staff have their designated leaves, the commitment will eventually follow (or we could hope so)

During my primary school years, I judged absent students. A
part of it was jealousy; another was suspicion. It was the consequence of my
mum disapproval on any of my attempt to skip school. Worse still, my school
presented an award for a student who excelled in attendance. I had never
received such award but there were some special students who were given extra
vitamins by their parents and never missed school for the whole year, who did
receive that coveted honor. And my mum wouldn’t fail to give me a snide remark
to remind me the importance of attendance, “One thing you never got, an attendance
reward. If only you were a bit stronger,” she used to say, much to my distaste. She was right, as always, attendance does
show a whole lot about yourself than you are ready to admit.

Not only was attendance a priority in school, later in life
we learned that the priority on attendance has never shifted at the work place
as well.

Why such priority is placed on attendance? It is apparently the
fundamental performance indicator for every person or employee in a company.
The logic is simple, what could be accomplished when an employee is out of
work. Not much, isn’t it? Every employee is given a number of leave per year to
indulge in their preferred activities so how could we explain the absenteeism
and tardiness? Negative attributes, most definitely. And the fact that the
employees are not motivated to be at work.

In contrast, attendance record could be used to gauge the
positive attributes of employees. The
preferred trait a company could hope for from an employee is accountability.
Without it, executing any plans either short or long term, could be a climb.
And a success of any plan depends heavily on teamwork, which any one fails to
turn up would cause the entire team’s instability; hence interrupt the entire
schedule drawn up earlier.

One could argue that attendance is not as important as the
capability of an employee. Some mediocre employee could be present 365 days
throughout the year but not contributing much as well. But again, imagine what
could be accomplished if a dedicated employee is always present and motivated
to contribute for the company. A whole lot I would say. The fact that he/she
puts effort to be present, the commitment level is there for the company.

Attendance also indicates self-control in an employee. It
doesn’t matter how you might feel on a personal level but when work is
concerned, you attend and be professional.

When I was in college in the 90s, I hated a few courses that
were mandatory. My option was always to skip. Instead, I copied the notes from
my friends who went. (Yes, you guessed it: my mum didn’t know about this) At
the end of the semester I managed to obtain a B- but I could simply get at
least an A- if I had cared enough to drag myself to class. See, attendance
stresses the importance of learning. You can’t be absent and understand the
learning process thoroughly. The point is, everyday is a learning process at work
and absence takes away that part, which is an unappealing trait.

After all is said and done, the bottom line of a business is
revenue. When calls are not made as scheduled, when emails are not replied on
time, when meetings are cancelled due to absenteeism, the company’s total
revenue could suffer.

If you think attendance is not as important, think again.
And when your company has a way to value attendance in dollars and cents,
everything will make sense eventually.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Very
soon, we are about to step into into the unknown territory. We’re at the verge
of venturing into the cloud platform of business where the priority has shifted
from physical hardware to intangible products. And where intangibility is
concerned, the quality service level must be second to none. Once a customer
places an order online, delivery and support are of utmost importance. Everything
happens in real-time and there’s very little margin for error. It’s absolutely
different in terms of handling its operations. It challenges your reaction time, and your
capability as a company, as a brand, and as a team.

TimeTec
Cloud business rides on a subscription-bases, where a customer signs up,
purchases a subscription plan, and begins the subscription. As simple as it sounds, to ensure the fluidity
of its operation is the complete opposite. We have gone to hell and back to
confirm that the flow is unflawed, making sure that our resellers are as excited
as we are and that we’d be able to match the needs of our customers at anytime.
Loopholes if any, are just too risky to not rectify immediately, and the
cloud-centricity of the design must be prevalent to ensure the customer’s user-friendliness
experience.

I’ve
been in this business for more than 12 years dealing with hardware and software
applications; to prepare the team for the cloud business platform is far from being
a walk in the park. They need to grasp the understanding of a cloud business
nature to be able to deliver customer’s expectancies. They have to be on their
toes to handle instant customer’s enquiries/complaints/requests for support, and
so on. The lead-time expected in any online business is almost instantaneous;
the tolerance level of the customer’s close to zero.

Despite
the concerns we have, the cloud computing technology gets us excited as it brings
biometrics and attendance to another level. Cloud is the future; cloud is where
we want to be. TimeTec Cloud redefines the possibilities in a workforce
management software; it further emphasizes the advantages of biometrics system
for SMEs. Get round-the-clock
consolidated data accessibility, accurate report analysis, and seamless
integration with 3rd party application, all with your TimeTec scalable
investment.

Get
started with a TimeTec Trial account and begin to understand the advantages and
benefits of using a cloud-based workforce management for your company!

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The outside view at one of the flagship stores in London during the launch of the iPhone 5

iPhone 5 was launched in the USA, London, Japan and many other advanced
countries sometime last week, driving enthusiasts to line up a week before to
get their hands on the latest Apple product post-Steve-Jobs. It doesn’t matter
how many iPhones you own; what matters is, you drool for the new one even
though the differences are not that apparent. What is it about iPhones and
smart phones that make people go ga-ga over them? Endless possibilities; so to
speak. (Although it does end when you have no memory left on your phone, oh
wait, they offer iCloud, so yes.. endless possibilities is the correct term)

My husband was in London when the iPhone 5 launched, the queue was very long and some had queued for 7 days.

Not much difference, yet they are worlds apart

Smart phones reinvented phones to not just be about calls
and SMS anymore. Smart phones open up possibilities for people to reconnect
with other people in the planet, to discharge time, to do work, to enjoy
creative products, to learn new things, to snap photos of your food at all
times, and the list goes on. The latest trend, which has been happening in
much-advanced countries, is to turn your smart phones into your new wallet.
Scan your phone and voila! You can pay for coffee, groceries, electrical items;
you name it. Smartphones are not accessories anymore; they have become a part
of us, attached to us at all times. We check on our children less than we check
on our smartphones.

The trend is here to stay. While some claim they could live
without their smartphones, majority of owners would be in a state of panic if
their smartphones were not in sight.

Banking on the trend, FingerTec introduces TimeTec Mobile,
an application that knows where you are, enables you to report attendance while
online or offline, without you having to convince anybody of your whereabouts.
The data then is processed in TimeTec Web at the main office for the human
resource department as well as for payroll. How cool is that? All you need to
do is to configure your phone and check-in through your phone whenever you are
stationed to work outside of the office. The GPS coordinate and your time will
be recorded accurately in the system.